Wild Pointers in C: Definition, Risks, and Avoidance
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Wild Pointer
A Pointer in C that has not been initialized till its first use is known as the Wild pointer. A wild pointer points to some random memory location.
Example of Wild Pointer
int main()
{
int *ptr;
/* Ptr is a wild pointer, as it is not initialized Yet */
printf("%d", *ptr);
}
How can we avoid Wild Pointers?
We can initialize a pointer at the point of declaration wither by the address of some object/variable or by NULL;
int main()
{
int val = 5;
int *ptr = &val; /* Initializing pointer */
/* Ptr is not a wild pointer, it is pointing to the address of variable val */
printf("%d", *ptr);
}- Question 1: What is wild pointer in C?